Autumn Landscape, Sugar Loaf Mountain, Orange County, New York 1867 - 1875

Jasper Francis Cropsey painted "Autumn Landscape, Sugar Loaf Mountain, Orange County, New York" using oil on canvas. Cropsey, a key figure in the Hudson River School, captured the American landscape with a sense of grandeur and optimism, but it's important to remember who had access to this landscape. This painting reflects the 19th-century American narrative of expansion and the romanticizing of nature, but it often obscures the displacement and erasure of Indigenous populations from these very lands. Consider the way the scene is framed, the vastness of the land, and the small white house nestled within. What stories are told, and importantly, what stories are left out? Cropsey's landscapes invite us to reflect on the complexities of history, identity, and the stories we tell about ourselves and our relationship to the land.